Kriegstein Katharina V, Giraud Anne-Lise
Cognitive Neurology Unit, Department of Neurology, J.W. Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Neuroimage. 2004 Jun;22(2):948-55. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2004.02.020.
The right superior temporal sulcus (STS) is involved in processing the human voice. In this paper, we report fMRI findings showing that segregated cortical regions along the STS are involved in distinct aspects of voice processing and that they functionally cooperate during speaker recognition. Subjects listened to identical sets of auditory sentences while recognizing either a target sentence irrespective of the speaking voice or a target voice irrespective of the sentence meaning. As the same stimulus material was used in both conditions, task-related activations were not confounded by differences in speech acoustic features. Half of the stimuli were voices of familiar persons and half of persons that were never encountered before. Recognizing voices activated the right anterior and posterior STS more than recognizing verbal content. While the right anterior STS responded equally to both voice categories, the right posterior STS displayed stronger responses to non-familiar than to familiar speakers' voices. It also responded to our baseline condition of amplitude modulated noises that required a detailed analysis of complex temporal patterns. Analyses of connectivity (psychophysiological interactions) revealed that during speaker recognition both anterior and posterior right STS interacted with a region in the mid/anterior part of the right STS, a region that has been implicated in processing the acoustic properties of voices. Moreover, the anterior and posterior STS displayed distinct connectivity patterns depending on familiarity. Our results thus distinguish three STS regions that process different properties of voices and interact in a specific manner depending on familiarity with the speaker.
右侧颞上沟(STS)参与人类语音的处理。在本文中,我们报告了功能磁共振成像(fMRI)的研究结果,显示沿STS的不同皮质区域参与语音处理的不同方面,并且它们在说话者识别过程中进行功能协作。受试者在识别目标句子(无论说话声音如何)或目标声音(无论句子含义如何)时,听取相同的听觉句子集。由于在两种情况下使用的是相同的刺激材料,任务相关的激活不会因语音声学特征的差异而混淆。一半的刺激是熟悉的人的声音,另一半是从未听过的人的声音。识别声音比识别语言内容更能激活右侧前、后STS。虽然右侧前STS对两种声音类别反应相同,但右侧后STS对不熟悉的说话者声音的反应比对熟悉的说话者声音的反应更强。它也对我们的调幅噪声基线条件做出反应,该条件需要对复杂的时间模式进行详细分析。连通性分析(心理生理相互作用)显示,在说话者识别过程中,右侧前、后STS均与右侧STS中/前部的一个区域相互作用,该区域与处理语音的声学特性有关。此外,前、后STS根据熟悉程度显示出不同的连通性模式。因此,我们的结果区分了三个处理语音不同特性的STS区域,并且它们根据对说话者的熟悉程度以特定方式相互作用。